The Crucible
by Stephensmat
Summary: Everyone who endures The Crucible comes out the other side as a totally different person. Lara Croft became the Tomb Raider on the Isle of Yamatai. But it wasn't a single moment, it was a series of intense experiences over the course of the expedition. These are the moments of transformation. A series of drabbles, based on the reboot. Rated Hard T, for heavy themes.
1. Prey

Lara had thought she was overwhelmed when the boat broke apart. But as scared as she was, she knew she would be okay; because Roth was there, holding out a hand to her. Roth had always protected her. He'd always looked after her, and made her feel better. She knew he would catch her.

And then she slipped through his grip and dropped into the ocean.

Lara was a strong swimmer. At least, she was in a warm swimming pool. She'd scuba dived in the Australian Barrier Reefs, she'd competed in freestyle events... But fully clothed, bleeding, vaguely concussed and with ice-cold seawater pouring into her lungs as she screamed... It was an entirely different experience; and Lara was certain she would drown before she could remember so much as a single swimming lesson.

_The first thing they taught us in swim class was called the Deadman's Float. _She thought distantly. _I always thought that seemed a little ghoulish._

She remembered making it to shore, but she didn't remember swimming. She remembered lightning, but she didn't remember clouds. She remembered seeing the others, further up the beach, but she didn't remember seeing lifeboats...

And then she heard the sound of something swinging through the air behind her, and she remembered nothing at all.

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><p>She saw the dawn starting to break outside the obscene Butcher's Den she found herself in. A big meat locker, for human meat. The floor was thick with blood and discarded bones.<p>

But what hit her first was the smell.

Lara had seen sacrificial chambers before. She had seen the ancient chambers where cannibalism was performed in centuries past. They had all been... Dry. Dusty. This place was still slick with fresh gore.

Lara had come from a wealthy family. And though she had religiously made an effort to support herself _without_ her waiting trust funds, her family had been wealthy enough that she had been taught what to do in the event of being abducted. Her job was to stay calm, keep from antagonising her captors, and do what she could to make friends with them, until rescue could come.

Lara knew all these rules, and obeyed none of them. She wasn't being held to ransom; she was hanging upside down from a meat hook, surrounded by people who had already been skinned, swaying above what was left of yesterdays menu.

The only way to get free of the ceiling, was to get to the floor, and do it very suddenly. The floor was littered with deadfall sticks and jagged bones. She tried to miss them as she broke free and fell.

She failed.

She had screamed when she pulled the spike out of her side. She had screamed, and bawled, and whimpered and cried, and thrown up. She may even have passed out for a few minutes.

Once she found her way out of the meat locker, she had found the altar. A small candlelit structure... with a fresh body crucified across it.

It was Steph.

Lara was sick to her stomach. She'd never been close with Stephanie during the voyage, but to see anyone strung up like this...

It struck Lara suddenly that she and Steph were the only women in the chamber full of bodies.

_So did they keep me alive because they wanted to keep the meat fresh? _She thought. _Or something much worse?_

Once free of her ropes, Lara staggered her way through cave-ins, runaway mudslides, passages so narrow it crushed her ribcage...

_Find Roth. Need Roth. Keep Moving. Need the others. Find the others. Find the Endurance Crew. Need the Endurance. Heh. The name of the ship was Endurance. Funny. No, nothing's funny. Need Endurance. Find Roth. Roth will help you!_

She pushed through, swallowing dirt and mud and black, sticky blood from human and animals... Until the passage had caved in and dumped her in a rushing underground river. She had tried to swim up, catch a breath of air, but the underground passage had no air pockets, only solid stone.

Lara fought her panic. The underground river had doused her torch instantly. No light could hope to shine down here. She had no chance to swim, no direction to swim in. She was at the nonexistent mercy of the current, hoping that it was flowing out somewhere she could breathe...

As dizziness started to claim her from oxygen deprivation, she prayed the river would get where it was going, and get her there quickly.

She was spat out of a mountainside, but she wasn't even close to done yet; the current carrying her along a nearly straight drop. The ride back to the shoreline slammed her against every tangle of thorns, every jagged edge. She was a bloody pulp of barely moving flesh, until finally she saw daylight again.

With long sobbing breaths, Lara wrapped her arms around her middle, wretchedly waiting for the world to stop spinning.

* * *

><p>Her senses lit up like someone was screaming a warning at her. In the far distance, she could hear them coming. Men, with their gun and their knives. They were laughing. They knew she had escaped, and they were laughing. They would kill her, and God knew what else, and it was a fun game for them to play.<p>

_Keep Moving. Keep Moving. Keep Moving. Keep Moving. _

Sobbing, Lara fought her way upright and ran, trembling from the cold, trembling harder from the fear. Her fingers were broken, two of them sticking out at odd angles. She yelled as she tried to straighten them, whimpered as she tried to tear her shirt and bandage them **and** keep running, all at the same time. Blood was running down her legs from a thousand cuts.

_Find Roth. Need Roth. Keep Moving. Need the others. Find the others. Roth will save you!_

And then the thunder cracked the sky, and poured heavy driving rains down on her.

She had wondered why her screams hadn't drawn her captors attention back in the Butchers Den, and now she knew. They'd heard screaming before. Just as the hawks had heard from the rats and rabbits.

Prey often squealed.

Lara ran until she couldn't see their flashlights any more and shivered against the nearest rock wall, turning the frequency dial of her emergency beacon. "Hello? This is Lara Croft! Can anyone hear me?"

She was cold, wet, bleeding, and calling for help as loud as she could, even as she was being hunted.

She just needed to find Roth. He would know what to do. He would protect her.

She was Prey.

* * *

><p><strong>AN<strong>: _First one down. This isn't going to be a novelization, only a series of drabbles. I don't know how many there will be. This story will cover the game, and Lara's transformation at various points. I might continue beyond the end of the game, I don't know yet. It depends on how things turn out._

_Read and review!_


	2. Hungry

Her first kill was a deer.

She had never been a spoiled child. Her classmates saw to that. Lara had gone to all the finer schools, born into a family lucky enough to afford them; but her classmates barely listened to the lectures, barely looked at the textbooks. Lara hated them. She was not a fool enough to think that her privilege was normal. She knew she was smart. Knew she was beautiful. She had listened to Roth telling her stories of her bloodline. All the things that the Crofts did over the years.

The lessons fascinated her, but school bored her. She was touched with inspiration; and she knew she was meant for something else, something grand. but she didn't know what it was.

But she couldn't believe she was meant for _this_.

Hunting was tradition in an English Aristocrat. With her parents... gone, Lara could have taken her trust fund early, but didn't. She had paid her own tuition, earned her own keep. But it was still the scene of her early life. Anyone with a Manor and Title had tried their hand at fox hunting. Lara had taken up archery at an early age... But she'd never enjoyed bloodsports, just on principle, and she'd never fired a bow with broken fingers, or shivering, trembling limbs.

_Don't think about it. Do it. Don't think about it. Do it. Don't think about it. Do it. _

The deer had heard her coming, and Lara cursed herself. She had seen wolves on the island, and knew that they could run down a deer with endurance. She didn't have that option. A wolf would have no problem tracking her blood trail. If she didn't get some food, the damn _deer_ would be a thousand times more than she could handle if it decided to turn and fight.

The deer ran out of sight, and Lara tried to chase after it. She pushed harshly through the brambles and bushes. She knew she wouldn't find it on the other side. She'd given it so much warning with her clumsy noise it could be anywhere by now.

Lara returned to the tree, trying to see a little further... And she saw it. It had retreated to the far side of the rocks, but it couldn't see her... She was fifteen feet off the ground.

Lara drew her salvaged bow, staring down a trembling arrow; praying that her hands would be steady enough to keep her from starving to death. Despair set in as she released the arrow. She was clawing for one more hellish day in this nightmare place.

_Don't think about it. Do it. Don't think about it. Do it. Don't think about it. Do it. _

The deer never knew what hit her. And it _was_ a her. Lara was able to discern that as she brought her next arrow closer. The arrowhead was small but sharp, and she began slicing its fur away, wondering if she could make some gloves, or sleeves, or _something_ to hold back the wind and rain.

A smaller voice squealed from her left, and she snatched up her bow. The new animal was... young. It was a deer, barely two months old, and Lara knew instantly that she had just orphaned the little one.

It was terrified of her, but unable to leave the mother's body...

_Bambi's mother._ Lara thought bleakly. _I just shot Bambi's mother._

The helpless creature squealed, and Lara knew it was doomed. More so than her. She at least had learned the protection of silence. The baby's squealing would call down every carnivore on the island.

Lara notched another arrow into her bow... and put it right between the little creature's eyes. Another kill to add to her pathetic food supply. Even the deer were scrawny and starving on the isle of Yamatai.

She had thrown away more than a few of her promises to herself today. She had promised that she wouldn't participate in hunting. She had promised herself she wouldn't give way to despair. She had promised herself she wouldn't be cruel to anything or anyone that was helpless. But now she didn't care. If one of her friends had come by with a chocolate bar, she would have caved their head in with a rock to get a bite of it.

_Find Roth. Roth will save you. Keep moving._

It was less than two days since she'd had her bunk on the ship. She had thought her cabin was 'roughing it'. She had run her fingers through her hair and adjusted her necklace, and scrolled through the various albums on her iPod, congratulating herself on planning out her own expedition and having an adventure.

And now she was a savage. Hunger had beaten the civilization clean out of her. She looked down at the innocent, adorable, lovely little creature; and she was ready to eat the meat raw off its bones.

But she didn't feel... savage. She didn't feel evil, or callous or cruel. She was just cold. She was just scared.

She was hungry.

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><p><strong>AN<strong>: _Read and Review_


	3. Student

Yamatai was her original intention. She had sought this place. Not this way, of course; but she had pushed them. She had pushed, and pleased and insisted. The boat kept going long after what made sense, long after what was typical. Maybe even a little past what was safe. Whitman was determined, his creditors and his ex-wives hounding him. Sam was totally devoted to Lara, arguing her case every night, long after the decision was made. And Roth...

_Find Roth! Roth will save you! Just keep moving!_

But even as Roth quietly told her it was getting too dangerous to keep going, and how supplies were getting low, Lara hadn't been worried. What was the worst that could happen?

She had thought to find the island, land and spend a few days unearthing its mysteries, retreating every night to her tent, and her well cooked meal, maybe catch a fish or two for her dinner; while her friends traded campfire stories and toasted their imminent fame and fortune from all the discoveries they had made.

She hadn't found the Dark Place. It had found her. Its jaws had leaped up from the merciless ocean to rip the Endurance apart and devour them all whole.

The Isle of Yamatai had been a place of many mysteries, all of which would chew her up and spit out the bones. Everything that moved on the godforsaken rock was trying to kill everything else.

She had known the nature of the food chain from third grade. She had known bushcraft from her lessons with Roth. She had known about First Aid and the priorities of shelter or water or food or clothing from the classes she had taken in preparation of their first trip.

She had known the pagan rites. The human sacrifices of many cultures.

Within an hour on Yamatai, Lara realized she hadn't known anything.

The Island had beaten the civilization out of her and reduced her to raw survival force. But her mind was still sharp as it ever was, soaked in adrenaline and with the stakes raised to a matter of life and horrifying death.

She folded herself into a ball, clutching at her bow, just watching. Watching the patrols of madmen and fanatics creeping past her tree, not knowing their target was over their heads. She had watched the hawks with their razor sharp eyes picking out meals from the long grass. She had watched the prey animals sit up with sudden alertness, survival instincts of their own telling them when they were in danger.

She thought she knew ancient cultures and languages, but then she found the villages. She learned the architecture of a culture so deeply ingrained in the thinking of their people, that even in the valley of storms and landslides, they still built their shelters to be recognizable as Japanese, Greek, Inca, even German...

She learned that gods and ancient powers were totemic. They all had different names for their Gods, but they all worshiped the storms, the predators, the sun, the moon... The same story of the Lost Souls, painted over and over again in their tortured hand.

She learned the differences between carefully written letters of various languages in a textbook, and the wild desperate graffiti clawed on the walls, begging for someone to hear their message. She learned the rise and fall of empires from the leftovers that the Island had not deigned to crush into pulp.

The message was the same, written over and over, language after language, culture after culture, century after century...

_**NO ONE LEAVES!**_

She had thought she knew agility from the strength training in the gym. She was almost Olympic-level in gymnastic skill. She had won school awards, trophies, ribbons. She thought she knew how to run, how to dodge around obstacles, walk a balance beam, and clear hurdles.

She was wrong. Yamatai had taught her how to run, _really_ run, as her life truly depended on it. Yamatai had taught her how to get around obstacles, and to avoid being knocked down without slowing even a little bit. Yamatai had taught her how to scamper along a tiny ledge, or climb a wall of sheer stone and ice.

Lara didn't weep for it any longer. She soaked herself in it, devoured everything she saw and heard. She had the mind of an honor student, and this deadly, dangerous education would mean her life.

She had the energy of the place now. The hungry savagery of predator and prey, the dance of strike and escape. She knew when to attack, and when to defend. She knew sight lines and taking cover.

And for all that, she was still running. Yamatai had taught her how to survive hell on earth, but not how to claim a place in the Damned Kingdom of the Maniacs and the Monsters.

She thought she knew what she was capable of. She thought she knew her limits. Every hour that passed taught her differently.

_Find Roth! Roth will save you! Just keep moving!_

The days were long and cold. The nights were worse, but she was learning. These were lessons she'd never thought to learn. Lessons that she could not learn any other way. A thousand lessons in things that only Yamatai could teach her.

She was a student.


	4. Killer

Lara had learned how to shoot in her athletics was Olympic level with a bow and arrow, pretty good at marksmanship with a bolt action rifle...

She'd never used a handgun before.

The gun she had taken had only one bullet left. She didn't know where all this ammunition had come from, but she didn't much care. One bullet had been all she needed.

At every battle, every skirmish, she had shouted across to them, begging them not to attack her, begging them to leave her alone. They never did. They were predators. They did not care what their Prey begged of them.

She had escaped with a zip-line; the fire covering her retreat. She had lost the others completely.

When she finally made another camp, she curled tightly into a ball, still feeling the man's hands on her flanks, still feeling the blood squishing between her fingers.

Her memory was playing tricks on her. Sometimes she thought she'd shot him with his own gun, sometimes she thought she'd hit him with a rock, sometimes she was convinced she'd gutted him with the over and over, the one detail that was certain was that she'd practically exploded his brains. His every thought, his every memory, his every idea, or dream or emotion or nightmare... She could see all of it exploding, every time she closed her eyes.

She curled herself tighter again, as the winds howled horrifically around her camp. Even against the wind, she could hear the slightest sound of something moving, and Lara rolled instantly. No thought, no fear, no hesitation. There was a sound, and she struck out.

She came out of her sobbing ball in a combat crouch with her teeth bared, and her knife drawn, ready to slash. But it wasn't one of them.

It was a wolf.

The animal was old, it's fur threadbare. It was alone. Lara knew that instinctively. The old hunter had been cast out by the pack. Wolves usually cared for their elders, but not on Yamatai. There was no loyalty here. No loyalty. No hope. No mercy. No escape. There was no weakness the wolf's old eyes, no self-pity. It was debating whether to eat her or not. Lara felt the blood of three would-be killers on her face, washed by the hot tears that rolled down her cheeks, but her gaze didn't 'd already picked her target. She put the knife right between its eyes...

The wolf and the woman glared electrically at each other across the flames... and the wolf backed away.

Lara dropped, done for a while. The adrenaline had spiked during the fight, then faded at the campsite; spiked again, then faded, and left her hollowed out and exhausted. She thought for a while about the Wolf. The animal was a hunter. skilled, experienced killer, and it had backed down when faced with her at her most emotional, her most vulnerable. It could smell the blood on her. It could smell death on her hands, and it had backed away.

Even six hours before, the sudden spike of fear would make her run away, and now it made her stand. If she'd heard a twig snap six hours ago, she would have run for cover and then turned back to look and see what it was. But now she reacted with war. She'd heard the sound and she was instantly on alert, in a full combat crouch, weapons drawn and ready.

_One confirmed kill, and I'm ready to do it again._ She thought bleakly. _I used to survive by running, until ten minutes ago, when I survived by killing. And now it's my default position._

Lara tried to sleep, clutching her blade in one hand, and her stolen, empty gun in the other. _Roth, where are you?_

The rain washed over her grime coated hands, but the blood would not come off. She told herself it hadn't changed her that much. She reminded herself how easy it was, and surely something truly evil couldn't be that easy. She told herself that she was just like a solider, or a police officer, or any one of a dozen other professions that were respected... which could still cause body-counts.

She had to tell herself these things because the bullet couldn't come back, and she wasn't ready for what that meant.

She didn't feel guilt. She knew what her victim was. She knew what he was going to do, and she knew only one of them was walking away from that. She didn't feel guilt.

Which, oddly enough, was the hardest part. She'd just taken a human life. Shouldn't she feel remorse? At least, more remorse than she clearly did now? Should it have been so... easy?

Somewhere in the distance, someone cried out in horror as something exploded so completely that it would never be put back together again. Somewhere in the other direction, an ancient wolf howled, seeking another predator to come and face it in mortal combat, with survival the only prize.

She knew exactly how both of them felt.

She was a Killer.


	5. Disciple

Prayer was a tricky thing on the Island. Lara had never considered herself very religious. She had studied endless forms of worship to one god or another. The Ancient Cultures were wrapped in their adoration of the same things. The Sun, The Moon... They worshiped lions and crocodiles and lightning and volcanoes and wolves and spiders and planets and stars.

As part of her studies in school, Lara had traced the origins of many religious cultures. Plenty of cults and pagan rites were offshoots and derivatives of the cultures that came before them.

But what each and ever definition of faith came down to, was a puny nothing mortal, begging for compassion from forces beyond their comprehension.

Her father had told her that every myth had its root in at least one truth, one fact. Lara had believed him, and told herself that if she wanted to understand the truths of the universe, she had to start with that one unimpeachable fact.

Lara had originally come to Yamatai, hoping to understand. Hoping to learn something more. It was a search for fact... But she had found something far more bone chilling.

Lara had prayed for rescue, then prayed for help... But she didn't expect an answer. She had never really thought much about the Supernatural, though she knew people that did. But she had no respect for people who ignored God until they needed a magic wand to rescue them.

The ones that came before her on the island had a thousand different names for gods and goddesses. Mathias had bent a whole Island of lunatics to his manic needs by invoking the names of Ancient Queens.

One thing that Lara had discovered: The ones that got anything out of any faith, even as all others turned jaded around them... The true believers all had the same quality. They asked to understand, before they asked for help.

Lara wanted neither. She only sought escape.

Each religion had its soothsayers. Even Mathias claimed to know exactly what to do. Prophecy was the point of any cult, any faith. Lara had been fascinated with the story of the Oracle of Delphi; but she never really believed the future could be foretold.

It was a position that seemed justified when she got through to the rescue choppers. Warnings from Lunatics and cultists didn't add up. She controlled her own destiny.

And then the Storm swept into existence. It didn't roll in off the ocean, it didn't sweep down from the mountain. One moment there was nothing, and then there were stormclouds, spontaneous and savage. It tore through the helicopter with lightning and hail... and then they were gone.

It defied logic. Defied reality. It defied Lara's whole view of the universe. For a few moments, Lara actually wondered if she'd been pushed over the edge; and maybe her overloaded, lonely little brain had finally snapped from the sheer total psychotic weight of the madness she had been forced through.

But there was nothing imaginary about the people calling for help... or the bodies.

And as she ran to try and find them before Mathias' people did, the warnings crystallized into prophecy in her mind. She had been warned, over and over.

_**NO ONE LEAVES!**_

Lara knew she was changing. She knew it. She had already lost so much of herself to the island. One by one, the aspects of her personality had been smacked out of her.

But something she hadn't expected to lose was her skepticism. She hadn't expected to become a believer. But when she believed that storms and typhoons could be conjured from nothing before her eyes... when she accepted that the wind that tried to gust her off the face of a mountain was angry at her efforts, and not the product of simple weather systems...

When she stood before her skeptical, reasonable, educated friends, and told them that the Island would not allow them to leave until the Dead were allowed to Rest...

Lara never expected to become a believer, but the Island had beaten reason out of her soul; and denial was quick to follow. She found herself reading Matthias' journal closely, hoping to separate the myth from the fact, once again; with a whole new view on what was possible.

Even a few days before, she would have called it coincidence. It would have been coincidence that their ship had been devoured on the rocks, even though it was fully equipped with sonar to find the ocean floor. It would have been coincidence that the rescue plane had been struck by lightning from a clear blue sky. It would have been coincidence that Sam, descendant of the Sun Queen would have been spared the bonfire at her feet by a sudden slap of stormwind...

Her father would have believed. He was forever chasing myths and legends, looking for the heart of all of them. Lara had always hated that. Even before the mission that had claimed him, the Lord Croft and Conrad Roth would run off and leave her, for months at a time, chasing things that didn't exist...

Or did they?

The simple acceptance of the evidence of her own senses had expanded her world considerably. If Yamatai had an angry Storm God at its heart, then what of others? What of the Egyptian Pyramids? Or Lost Worlds full of Dinosaurs in the deep jungle? The historical possibilities of King Arthur as a real person? Or for that matter, what about vampires and goblins? Where did the line between myth and history get drawn, when you resolved to free your friends from Possession?

Those that believed in any Gods or Goddesses had one thing in common. They each had a moment of Revelation, when their thinking shifted and they knew without question that they would live their lives differently, make their choices differently, based around a new certain truth...

Lara had the moment when she was aboard the helicopter. Himiko ceased to be an anthropological idea and became the driving force, as she grabbed for the controls. Lara must have seemed like a madwoman to the pilot; worse even than Mathias, trying to force him to land the chopper, willing to shoot the man who had come to free her from the unholy place...

Her sudden faith in something she hated and feared had slain someone she loved, and driven a wedge between her and the only people in Purgatory that she counted as allies.

Lara could not be swayed. She was as certain as Mathias, though dedicated to the opposite goal.

She was a Disciple.

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><p><strong>AN<strong>: Read and Review!


	6. Predator

Grimm, the tough old bird, had taken three of them with him. He had done it, not only to save Lara, but to save himself. If he had so much as stopped struggling, he wouldn't have been Grimm any longer. Of all of them, the Island had touched him the least. Lara envied him for it. She was changing, and the only other option was to die.

She had to change into a survivor, and she did. Grimm had to change into a prisoner, and he refused. It was why she lived, and he died.

And then Lara did something unusual. She vowed to make the bastards pay.

It was a strangely empowering feeling; the sudden certainty that she had a new goal. For the first time since the boat had sunk, Lara was after something more than living to see the dawn. She wanted more than escape. She wanted victory. She wanted blood. She wanted to make them face the same unholy carnage that she had faced.

She could hear them running on the far side of the temple walls. They were jockeying for position, taking places on the far side of the stone walls and ornate doors.

Even a few days before, Lara would have wept for the stonework as she taped the launcher to her shotgun. And then she realized suddenly that she didn't care.

"She has a grenade launcher!" A voice shouted in panic. Panic. Just for a second, Lara found it intoxicating. These beasts had slaughtered and pillaged anyone unlucky enough to come near... And now they were afraid of her.

"That's right!" She heard her voice howl exultantly. "**Run**, You Bastards!"

It was the exact moment she had become a better predator than them. A hunter among hunters. A Lion amongst Jackals. She had killed, she had defeated her hunters... but until that moment, they had never run _away from her_.

The layers of the island went back to pre-Christian times, and ended with modern shipwrecks. The worst elements of human beings had been brought to bear on anyone unlucky enough to survive. The island had beaten the gentleness, beaten the compassion, beaten the simple humanity clean out of all of them and replaced it with madness and bloodlust.

And Lara Croft, the girl who had sobbed over her first campfire, simpered over her lightest wounds, and wept for a dead deer... was now locked and loaded for war; an equal match for all of them put together.

She wasn't the latest resident in the Tombs of Purgatory any longer.

She was the Predator.

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><p><strong>AN<strong>: _Read and Review_


	7. Solitary

Roth was dead.

When the nightmare began, she had clung to the idea of finding him, because Roth would save her. He would protect her, and she needed protection. She was weak, she was helpless...

But she wasn't any more.

And now she was his only hope. It amazed her to think it, but he was wounded terribly, keeping the wolves at bay (literally) and she had to save him. It was the first time anyone had counted on her for survival.

And she was terrified.

But even as he bled to death before her, he wasn't even nervous. "You can do it, Lara." He said, as sure as the sun coming up. "You're a Croft."

At the time, she thought he was tossing out platitudes, but as she crawled the caves, she knew her father would be in his element.

_Maybe that's why he's dead._

When the nightmare began, she had clung to the idea of finding Roth, because Roth would save her. He would protect her, and she needed protection. But not any more.

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><p>She was dead.<p>

When she awoke from the helicopter crash, her ribs were burning, her lungs were burning, and Roth was hovering over her. She could still feel his warmth on her lips. The sensation jarred her a moment, as she fought for another firey, agonizing breath. Her lungs had forgotten how to breathe.

Her lungs had forgotten how to breathe; because a moment ago, she wasn't breathing. She had been killed in the crash. The lightning had struck her, and the power of the hellplace had ripped through her body, leaving her slain and broken...

And then Roth had brought her back.

Her first instinct was right. Roth **did** save her... But no longer because she needed protection. If Yamatai killed her, she would only be one among thousands. But now she was alive again. Death had claimed her, and thanks to Roth, it had spat her back out.

She was a survivor, not of the Island, not of the Solarii... but of the Grim Reaper Himself.

And she had failed to return the favor. Roth had died, because of her.

Just like Grimm.

Just like Steph.

Just like the Rescue Pilots.

Just like Alex.

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><p>The others found her soon after. They had less than a second to review. Lara wondered what they had endured. She had swum rivers of blood and leaped across lava flows through collapsing caverns. Lara didn't know what the rest of the Endurance Crew had gone through, but she knew it wasn't anything like that.<p>

Joslin took the news of Roth's death like a street kid from Queens should. She went looking for something to punish. Lara was the best available target. "Everyone seems to keep dying around you, Croft. Has anyone forgotten that she's the reason we're all stuck here?!"

Sam was quick to defend her, but Lara didn't care. She didn't need Jo to blame her. She had been blaming herself for every inch of the whole disaster. Words couldn't hurt her any more. And Joslin Reyes was a special case, because in her way, she loved Roth more than anyone alive.

Lara could have said something, but instead she passed the battered page, torn from Roth's journal. The page that Joslin had written, telling Roth that he had a daughter.

Joslin had seen the page and barely reacted. She sent Lara a question from behind a tough poker face. Lara met her gaze head on. They had a personal connection now, through a man that had been a father for both of them, though in very different ways.

Joslin pulled a folded picture of her daughter out of her pocket, looking at it, while they gave the girl's father a Viking Funeral. They watched until the pyre burned away to nothing, and Lara listed the dead... and considered the living.

Whitman was the worst kind of crazy. His was the kind of madness... that wasn't insane at all. Like Mathias, he had come the full circle back to a perverse sanity.

And Alex...

* * *

><p>Losing Alex made her hurt inside. There wasn't many kinds of pain that she hadn't experienced, but Alex hurt. Another life lost in her name.<p>

Lara had always considered him a friend. She knew 'friend' was the worse insult a woman could give a man; but she had no idea that he wanted more. She knew why he had never declared. Fear held him back. Until Yamatai. Fear had held her back too. Until Yamatai. Alex had found the courage he needed, just in time to make the bold move, too late to save his life.

The wreck sank into the ocean behind her, the last fall of another victim to the ancient Purgatory.

Lara wanted to cry for Alex. She wanted to weep for him as her friend, and mourn him as the man that loved her. But she couldn't let her eyes become filled with tears. She couldn't take the risk. She needed her eyes clear, because even here on a sinking ship, there were predators and prey.

She had bawled for Roth. She had reacted much less to Alex. Alex loved her, and she hadn't reacted nearly as much as he would have wanted her to.

Her friends crowded around her, demanding answers, demanding details, demanding news of their friend. Lara gave them little. Words were not important now. Sam was still in danger. The others were worried for Sam, of course, but Lara alone had seen the stone altar, with Steph strung up across it. Only Lara had seen Sam, almost burned at the stake.

The others craved escape. Lara was going the other way.

There was a mission to accomplish, and Lara was the only on that could carry it out. If she took any of them with her, they would bring down the Army of Maniacs on her head.

It wasn't until much later that Lara realized she was volnteering to go back into danger, because she knew she could handle it better than them. All the effort she had put into escaping harm, and she was now seeking it out.

She was a soldier.

Taking the others along never occurred to her. She was all she needed. Just her, alone. Equipped, prepared, with a mission to accomplish, she volunteered, knowing she may not come back alive; but the cause was just, and the risk was necessary.

The others would be good to her. They would protect her, but they would fail. She could protect herself, and if they stayed behind, they would be safer.

Lara suddenly found herself wanting to get away from them. They were loud. They were waving their arms around. All except Jonah, who took the island in stride, with the serenity of the Buddha and the ruthless preparation of a warrior born.

Lara felt an odd affinity with the huge New Zealander. She had found stillness. It was a stillness that was ready to explode into lethal, unstoppable action at a moment's notice. It was a stillness that made her hyperaware of her surroundings. She wondered what he had faced in the Army to give him that same still readiness.

Lara was a survivor now, and the only qualification for being a survivor was to be alive, when everyone else was not. She was a survivor now, and that meant bad things for anyone else in reach. So she went after Sam, alone.

She was solitary.

* * *

><p><strong>AN<strong>: _Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I've been working on original fics, going up for sale soon._


	8. Merciful

Sam was her friend. Her oldest friend. Lara's cabin on the Endurance had only one photograph. It showed the two of them on the day that they and the rest of the class had graduated.

She had found the journals of the victims. She had read their decline from shipwrecked survivors to unhinged cannibals. Mathias had been wrecked with his friends too... and he had killed them all.

Sam would have been easy to write off. It would have been easy to leave her to her fate. But she was a friend. A friend from a whole other life. A life where the lights were on, and warmth came at the flip of a switch, and food was plentiful, and everyone was clean, and nobody was insane.

Whatever Lara was now, she couldn't afford weakness... and yet she had gone back for Sam. It was sentiment. It was friendship. It was loyalty. It was affection. It was a hundred things in her heart that served no aid to the pure feral survival instinct that kept Lara alive this far. And yet when the moment came, she didn't even hesitate.

She held on to the feeling. Exulted in it. She clung with all her might to the hopeful, pitiful, sentimental weakness in her scarred-over heart. It meant that she wasn't just another permanent resident of Hell. It meant her battered, exhausted soul still functioned, and she was still a human being, still more than the hungry savage.

Inside the Tunnels below the Japanese Temple, Lara had picked her way through stone and iron cages. She had watched, hidden from them, as some unfortunate soul was tossed into the tunnels, and a dozen lunatics ripped him apart with their teeth, hungry enough to fall on their own people like wolves. Those that survived turned back to their skeletal altars, crying out their terrible supplications to forgotten gods.

Lara had crept between the stone cages. One by one, she had passed their prisons, looking for Sam. Each and every prisoner was the same, pale and dusty from a life underground, emaciated from being given only enough food to keep starving... The ones that were smiling were the worst. Their giggling scraped over her sanity like nails on a chalkboard.

Each and every one had begged her for food and water, most of them desperate enough to try and to take a bite of her as she passed. When she gave them nothing, they had begged for her to end their suffering.

Lara had granted their wish. The bow was painless and silent.

The survivor in her howled against it. The survivor in her wanted to save her arrows and leave no trace of her presence. Like everything else that could help in any way, the arrows were few and far between. If any of the enemy noticed her actions, it would raise an instant alarm.

But she couldn't bring herself to leave these wretched victims to rot. She just could not let them stay like this. They begged her to do it. They craved escape, and the only escape they still understood was oblivion.

And Lara's razor mind had pity enough to grant them their wish. If the arrows ran out, then she would be helpless. If the arrows ran out, she would be put in one of these cages herself... But she could do nothing less. No matter how desperate her situation, she couldn't put her escape above this one act of kindness. The only act of kindness she could offer them.

She was Merciful.

* * *

><p><strong>AN<strong>: _The first trailer for the next Tomb Raider game has been released, and to those who have asked: Yes, it will have an impact on this story. I haven't decided what that impact will be yet, but I've decided this story won't end at the end of the first game._


	9. Raider

She was like the island itself now. She would claim what she needed of it, and decide what parts of Yamatai would be spared her wrath. The Storm God had taught her the ways of war, and Lara was only to happy to show what she had learned.

Mathias thought he knew what was happening. He thought he could control the Storm Queen, bend her ancient rage to his will. Lara had learned from him and his warriors, and now they were at her mercy, even as the wind howled with force enough to knock the tribal warriors off their feet, and sweep them off the mountain, Lara held fast.

The winds were more than unnatural, they were insane. The Enormous Temple at the top of the world was something from a pulp fiction novel, where the Ancient Masters would live. But there was nothing living.

And as Mathais made his pilgrimage, Lara gave chase. And as he destroyed the path behind him, Lara knew it as well as he did. The end had come.

Mathias had spent a lifetime dragging every poor unfortunate girl he found through the rituals, looking for a worthy Victim to offer; and now he was destroying the Temple paths and bridges behind him. He would never make this trek again. He would never return to the Sun Queen. He had banked everything, gambled everything, thrown away everything on faith that this one final victim would be enough to do it.

Mathias wasn't saving anything for later. There wasn't going to be a later.

Lara knew it too. Because not only would there be no second chance, there wouldn't be a temple. Yamatai summoned one last howl to try and beat her back; winds and lightning that ripped apart the temple, the pathways, the tunnels... The very mountain itself was coming apart.

And Lara kept going.

The Samurai Guard leaped through the disintegrating temple, charging on platforms that would never hold their weight, just for the chance, just for the possibility of killing her in the last hopeless seconds of their devotion.

And Lara kept going.

Every flake of soft powder snow, hurled at her fast enough to strip her face and hands raw, every time she slammed her climbing axe into the ice wall, another sheet of it would come down at her, and she would have to leap blindly to escape death, instant by instant. She paid for every inch she ascended as the mountain itself hurled boulders in her path.

And Lara kept going.

She wasn't at war with ancient guards, or with maniacs and murders. She was at war with Yamatai herself. And she was going to win.

It was The Ending. Her new life was ending. Everything was ending.

"There she is!" Someone yelled. "Kill her!"

Lara had heard those words before. She had pleaded with them, begged them to just leave her alone.

She wasn't like that any more.

"You won't stop me!' She howled back at them. "You **can't** stop me!"

She was Defiant.

She knew the Island now. Knew the storms. She had learned the source of them, and the reason for their fury. As the Queen of the place watched this final battle rage before her bones, Lara knew when to fight back, and when to huddle low and ride out the wind. Even Mathias didn't know when to bow before the wind. But he knew Lara was still standing when all his men were not, so he followed her example.

She wasn't learning survival any longer. There was nothing more this place could teach her. Even Mathias, who had lived a lifetime in this hell, was following her lead.

She was the Teacher.

And then, when she took him, she saw in his eyes the certainty. He had learned one last lesson, in the last seconds of his life. He had learned defeat.

Lara came at him, twin handguns firing steadily. Left trigger, right trigger. It was a strangely natural movement.

_I'm doing it! I'm winning!_

Left trigger, right trigger. Left trigger, right trigger. Usually, when she fought, she had hidden behind rocks, or walls, or debris; picking her moment and taking her shots, vanishing into the dark woods. But here at the top of the world, there was no cover, just her and her enemy.

_I'm saving Sam!_

Left trigger, right trigger. Left trigger, right trigger. She had never fought like this, as a quick, nimble gunslinger in the ancient, forgotten places; taking what she wished of lost tombs and leaving the rest in her wake.

_I'm killing the Monster and the Madman. I'm winning!_

Mathias howled as his body, which had survived an eternal hell on the Isle of Yamatai, fell before the fire of Lara Croft.

_I've never felt like this before._

She was the Winner.

_I hope this feeling never goes away._

She was the Tomb Raider.

* * *

><p>Nobody came near her on the boat. They avoided her. Her friends, what was left of them, they all stayed back too. They didn't know where her headspace was, but they knew not to intrude on it.<p>

Sam alone had come closer, grateful enough to bring Lara food or drink, offer thanks or company... Lara recognized the gesture on many levels. Gratitude for one. Sam had been rescued. Tribal for another; Sam was showing fealty to the alpha of their little pack. Emotional for another still. Sam was still recovering from the ordeal, and wanted the proximity of her protector.

Sam had given Lara a hug that never ended. It was the first piece of kindness in a hundred lifetimes that didn't involve a self-sacrificing death; and Lara loved her for it. She had returned the hug. It was the first time she had been gentle with anyone since forcing the crew to keep searching for the damned Island.

Sam put the Raider to rest, and brought Lara back to the surface. But even so, she was different now. Sam recognized it as much as anyone and returned to the others. Sam knew instinctively how she could repay her rescuer. Sam would answer the hundreds of questions. Sam would handle the doubts and convince them of the truth. Sam would defend the things done and the blood shed for the good of their little tribe, and for her own safety.

She would handle all these things, so that Lara wouldn't have to.

Lara watched the island as it faded into the distance... and found herself seriously considering whether or not to jump out of the boat and swim back. With all the mysteries of a thousand years left mostly unsolved, it was still a guaranteed place in the history books. After everything she had endured there, it didn't seem to make sense that she would leave _after_ she had conquered it.

But for all that, Lara didn't want to stay for the opportunities. When she got back to civilization, she would return to her home. The apartment would be spotlessly clean, her family lawyers would be waiting to talk about the state of her trust fund, and to organize any TV Interviews that she would make. Whitman still had a studio expecting a world-shaking adventure story, and there would be papers to sign. They would expect her to make the story entertaining. Something she could laugh about on a morning show.

If she told them about Himiko, she would be locked up.

There would be food that had been frozen and waiting around to be eaten for six months. There would be eight kinds of perfume on her dresser, and a closet full of different outfits. If she went back to the Manor she could pick a car to drive for that day. If she went back to the manor that was held for her in trust, she would walk on the polished floor and be careful not to leave scuff marks with her boots. She would sleep in her queen sized bed on silk sheets, after spending a lifetime sleeping on dirt and stone.

Lara suddenly realized how ridiculous she was. Being wealthy had never made her spoiled. Her father had seen to that, as had Roth when her father never came back. But there was a difference between being spoiled and being smart.

Nobody came near her on the boat. They didn't know where her head was at, but they knew not to intrude.

The Raider stood alone.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN<strong>: Read and Review_


	10. Adrift

**AN**:_ This is the first chapter after the end of the game, and it's semi-inspired by the trailer for the next game. This is my idea of where Lara goes after escaping the Isle of Yamatai._

* * *

><p>They made it back to land, and Reyes reported the deaths. That caused a stir, and suddenly their boat was covered in people. Yamatai was in international waters, and the studio had made them all sign waivers. There were no legal problems, but lives had been lost, and an ancient place uncovered. If the press wasn't interested in the death of a semi-celebrity, then every Treasure Hunter and Relic Finder in the world was hoping to get the co-ordinates.<p>

The Crew of the Endurance were taken to a police station. No charges, but it was secure, and the lawyers wanted to take their testimony in turns, to sort out who got first dibs on everything the expedition had discovered.

They had a chance to speak to each other before the rest of the world invaded. Lara had promised them in no uncertain terms that the Island was at peace now, but there may have been some survivors of Mathais' army left in the Shantytowns.

"You mean there was one you missed?" Reyes said under her breath.

Sam's fingers tightened convulsively on Lara's arm for a moment. The almost-sacrificial Lamb hadn't willingly left Lara's side since the top of the mountain.

Lara ignored Reyes' sarcasm. "My point is, if anyone returns to Yamatai, they should be able to come and go safely." She shrugged. "If we could make it out, so could they."

Reyes nodded. "Right, which means that any of our stories about the Spirit of the Sun Queen will be... well, laughed out of the room."

"It happened!" Sam barked.

"We believe you." Jonah promised soothingly. "But here in a place with lights on and running water, nobody else will."

"He's right." Lara nodded.

And then the lawyers arrived, and they didn't get a chance to speak again for a long time.

* * *

><p>The Endurance Crew were put up in a hotel by the Press, until they could sort out how to do the interviews. Everyone wanted to hear their story, but the Crew wasn't sure they wanted to tell it. Until they decided, none of the Press wanted their competitors to get access to the Crew first.<p>

It was a fairly cheap place, with peeling wallpaper in a few places. It was paradise to them. Hot water, actual beds, cutlery of any kind...

Lara slept on the floor. It hadn't been that long, but she couldn't get comfortable on a mattress any more. The last three times sleep came to Lara was when something had beaten her unconscious. Sam was crying out from the nightmares in the next room, and Lara went to sit with her. The Raider couldn't sleep. Sam clung to her arm like a baby.

Her clothes were new. Sam had dragged her to a dozen different stores. Lara had gone with her, because the girl wasn't willing to be parted from her Guardian just yet, but she wanted to pamper herself and feel like a young woman again. Lara had gone along because she had nowhere else to go. School felt like a joke now. Her apartment seemed like a waste of everything. The Mansion even more so.

* * *

><p>She felt herself split in two. Everything she looked at, everything she experienced; all of it brought two very different reactions. One viewpoint was Lady Lara Croft. The other viewpoint was the Tomb Raider.<p>

The Raider didn't sleep. The Raider pressed her back to the wall and fingered the knives from the kitchen, wondering which one would have the best balance, good for throwing at the door, or concealing up a sleeve.

Lara Croft was luxuriating in the feeling of being clean after a long hot soak. The Raider demanded she barricade the door before lowering her guard enough to wash. Lara had suggested more stylish clothes while shopping with Sam. The Raider demanded she keep her boots, instead of sandals. More hardy and practical.

Lara was trying to figure out what to do about her exams, and what classes to take next year. The Raider was making lists. Supplies to collect, training to take, lessons to learn. Lara didn't know how to throw knives properly. She needed to learn. She had found a bow on Yamatai, and been skilled with it, but she didn't know how to make one. She was at the mercy of her luck.

The Raider didn't like to be at anything's Mercy. The Raider didn't believe in Mercy.

* * *

><p>The Crew had met to discuss the matter of a Press Announcement. Sam was the last to arrive, with bags of food. "I got you guys some lunch. Hope you don't mind, they were all out of the chicken burgers."<p>

A large plastic bag. Lara hadn't felt anything plastic in a lifetime. Only stone, and wood, and metal. Plastic was too... malleable. Too easily shattered. The fragments would last forever, but not in any usable shape. A plastic bag was purely the creation of modern civilization... And Lara had almost forgotten what that was like.

The survivors were all staring at the bag with hungry eyes. The smell of food hit them all at once. Lara didn't reach for it.

Sam portioned out the food. Burgers, dripping with sauce, thick fries, salted and crispy. They were kept in containers. Cardboard boxes full of hot food.

Sam placed a burger and fries in front of Lara. It was more food than she had eaten the entire time she'd been on the Island put together. Food she hadn't scavenged herself. Food she hadn't had to fight for, even kill for.

Lara didn't reach for it. She was looking at fast food. Convenient food. Heavy food that would put fat on her bones and protect her from the cold, and fill her mouth with different flavors from different sources... She had no idea where this food came from. The meat could have been in a freezer for months, shipped across whole countries. The sauce would have been mixed together from a hundred different chemical ingredients...

In fact, now that she thought of it, the first meal she'd eaten and known the source of, was the meat she'd carved from Bambi's mother, who'd she'd shot herself.

"Eat something." Sam whispered in her ear, almost begging her.

Lara wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. All the things she'd done, and she was almost traumatized by the offer of a damn burger and fries. She looked up and realized everyone was having a similar reaction.

"We didn't have a clue, did we?" Reyes said finally.

"No." Lara said honestly. "Now we do."

They ate. Lara could hear the moans and giggles of people tasting salt and grease for the first time in eternity. Lara ate mechanically. After so long without a full stomach, this was more than she could comfortably take. She ate it all anyway, because she couldn't bring herself to leave food uneaten. In her head, the Lady Croft knew that if she ever wanted more, she only had to ask for it, or buy it herself. But she couldn't convince The Raider.

The Raider knew the value of meat. Knew the price of it. Row after row of uncooked supermarket beef and poultry and lamb, wrapped in plastic and sold cheap to the masses... The price of meat was forgotten here.

The Raider felt like a thief and ate it all anyway. The Raider knew that if you saw fuel for your body, you use it, before you lose it.

The Lady Croft wondered why it bothered her. She didn't need to worry about food any more. She didn't need to sleep with her back to the wall and a knife under her pillow.

Sam didn't need to be scared any more either, but she was. Scared enough to still need the others.

The Raider was already preparing.

The Lady Croft didn't know what she was preparing for.

Yamatai had taught her everything, except for the most important lesson: How to leave the Island, and come back to her life.

* * *

><p>The Crucible had touched them all in some way. Trials by Battle. Trials by Ordeal. The Support Group was full of war veterans who couldn't settle at home, and battered wives who had to flee their families for their own safety. The Endurance Crew was all in one such group or another. Lara had been sent alone to this one.<p>

The Raider understood these people, even if she didn't feel the same.

The Crucible had spat them all out again, and the Raider knew immediately which ones had survived.

Two of the women had restarted their lives. The Raider was fear, but also the hungry energy that came with beating something bigger and stronger than them. They would be fine.

One of the battered wives was saying all the right words in group, but The Raider could see that her spirit was broken so deeply that an army of trained experts couldn't put her back together again. She'd find someone else who offered her any kind of affection and cling to them at any price. Victims seeking another abuser, rather than handle life alone.

The soldier kept going on and on about the friend who hadn't survived his second tour. He said all the right things, and did all the activities. A soldier was used to doing as he was told. But The Raider could see the contempt in his eyes. His Crucible had spat him out and left him as a ball of pure, concentrated hate. He was not unlike one of Mathias' people now. Lara expected to see him on a Wanted Poster soon, if not the Nightly News.

The teenager who'd had a breakdown after a lifetime of being bullied seemed eager. His Crucible was small compared to hers, but insurmountable to him. He was speaking eagerly of his studies in Home-school. Everyone made the right noises, pleased that he was doing better now, but Lara knew he hadn't won his war. He'd run from it. The day would come when he'd have to face a bully again, and he wouldn't be able to run. His Crucible had broken him, and he'd taken no effort to rebuild himself stronger.

That teenager unsettled the Lady Croft. She wondered if she'd be the same way: Stable and strong, as long as everything in her life was cosy and protective and safe. Would another test or trial send her to pieces? Would passing through The Crucible again break her?

The Raider said no.

* * *

><p>"Lara, I want you to try something." The Doctor said gently. His voice was always gentle. His voice was soft and welcoming and disarming. Lara didn't fall for it. He was trying to put her at ease and get her to drop her guard.<p>

The Raider didn't drop her guard for anything. "If I can."

"I want you to try and describe the first thing you noticed when you woke up that first day."

"On the island?"

"After the island." He clarified. "The day after you got back, your first morning back in civilization. What was the first thing you noticed?"

Lara gave the question some thought. "It'll sound... unhinged."

"Try me."

"I know that you're all watching my state of mind, and I worry how you'll react to what I say."

"I understand." Her nodded. "Tell me anyway."

Lara sighed. "I was thinking how fragile it is. We just take for granted that the water comes out of the tap. We just take for granted that there will be food in the supermarkets, and that the trucks will roll in on time to stock the shelves, and the container ships will dock just in time to fill the trucks. We take for granted that the ATM will spit out money and that money will be be worth more than just... paper. We have a world so elegant and modern that none of us know how it works."

"You aren't the only one to think that way, you know." He pointed out kindly. "After what you've been through, it's only to be expected that you hold on to some of the habits and viewpoints that saved your life."

Lara said nothing to that. She wanted to escape this room. Words could reach people. The Raider didn't want to be reached. The Raider knew the value of silence. This man wasn't hunting her, but if his words could lower her guard, then he was as dangerous as the freaks of Yamatai.

"Those habits and viewpoints won't give me back." Lara admitted. "The part of me that I needed on the Island... That part of me can't talk about it, because if words make you lower your guard, then they have to be avoided."

"And the part of you that's still Lady Lara Croft?"

Lara said nothing. But the part of her that was still around from before the Endurance sank wanted to speak about nothing else until she ran out of words.

"You don't like to talk." The Doctor observed. "Samantha says you've been saying less and less."

Lara knew he was right and hoped it was something that could be fixed. The Raider howled at the betrayal. Sam, of all people, had given him a clue to her weakness.

"Let's try word association." The Doctor suggested brightly. "Ready?"

"Always." Lara responded, then shook her head. "Sorry. I thought that was my first word."

"Afraid not, though you've definitely got the idea. These words are based on your experience, but more to test how you're re-acclimating to civilization." The Doctor grinned. "Let's begin: Water."

"Days." Lara responded.

"Food."

"Weeks."

"Island."

"Test."

"Samantha."

"Loyal."

"Money."

"Paper."

"Himiko."

"Dead."

"Home."

Silence.

"Lara?" He pressed her gently.

The Lady Croft had a dozen answers. She had a Manor waiting for her to inherit it. She had an apartment that she had paid for herself without any handouts from her Trust Funds. She had lived in London, America, even Yamatai held a special place for her now.

The Raider had no answer at all.

She was Adrift.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>_Read and review!_


	11. Torn

_**AN**: In the lead-up to the next game, some plot details are starting to come through. This fic will bridge the gap between the two games. I don't know how far into the next game I'll take it. At least, not until I play it. Wish me luck._

* * *

><p>Sam went back to school. Lara went with her. Neither of them could get anywhere with their schoolwork. Their papers were left unwritten. The teachers were sympathetic. Sam kept going to school, because she knew that Lara only went when she did. If she stayed home, so did Lara.<p>

Their classmates noticed the new dynamic, and some gossiped that maybe the two young women were a couple now. The ones that had followed the news of what they had been through shut down the gossip, and Sam was grateful.

There was a strange balance between the two of them. Sam was fiercely protective of Lara, always quick to defend. Lara was protective too, but she was a bodyguard in a place where there was no danger, and as a result, the Raider was unpredictable. Sam stayed close, worried that if the Raider didn't find a challenge soon, she might start lashing out against people for things as simple as gossip or rumor.

* * *

><p>"What are you thinking?" Sam asked Lara softly one day.<p>

Lara said nothing.

Sam cleared her throat and tried a different way. "What's the Raider thinking?"

Lara's eyes glinted. Sam was the only one she had shared that sense of duality with. "I... I sort of made a deal with myself, that the Raider would only act when she was needed, but would still protect you." She shook her head. "I think that was a mistake."

"The Raider is a survivor." Sam said softly.

Lara nodded, not looking at her.

Sam didn't say what she was thinking aloud. _Here in civilization, the Raider found a way to hold on when she wasn't needed anymore, by using me as an excuse._ _The Raider saved me from Yamatai. But now that we're home, The Raider needs __me__ to save __her__. But from what? From civilization? From Lara?_

* * *

><p>Weeks passed. Lara went home to the Manor, having taken a leave of absence from the school. Sam had been in favor of it at first, wondering if Lara was trying to go Cold Turkey from things that woke The Raider. But within a few nightmares, Sam had caved and gone to The Manor too. Lara already had a guest room prepared.<p>

Sam tried to get them both out of the Manor, and out into the world. The Endurance Crew had a little notoriety, even a little celebrity after the news had made a big deal of their survival story. The nightclubs were only too happy to have them come in.

Sam wasn't sure if she wanted to get drunk, or get laid, or if she wanted those things for Lara, or if she should call it off. The nightclub was a mistake. Sam knew it after ten minutes. Lara was getting some attention from the guys, but she just kept watching them, caught between a predatory glare and the terror of prey.

Sam had learned enough from Yamatai to see it. Lara was being stalked. So was she, though less so. Half the guys there were already buzzed and prowling for a date. More than half of them were moving for position, trying to cut each other off, trying to get a little closer without it being obvious. Lara had triumphed over far more dangerous predators, but she recognized the intent. There was a different manner of animal instinct playing out a hunt on the dance-floor.

Sam told herself that Lara could take care of herself and ordered a drink. She was on her fourth drink before she found Lara again. The Raider was in one of the alcoves, her back against the wall, watching the crowd. A rather attractive man was with her, whispering sweet nothings in her ear, though Sam couldn't tell if Lara was even aware of him.

Sam suddenly found she hated it. She hated the noise, the lights, the heat, the people, the seductions, the games... None of them had a clue what danger really was. None of them had a clue about anything. But it was what normal girls her age did, and she drank another three or four shots trying to drown out common sense. She didn't want to think clearly. She didn't want to think at all.

Lara's guy was sniffing around for a kiss, but Lara was looking across the room at Sam, unreadable. She was looking for a response, but Sam didn't know what she'd do if she got one.

And then it turned out that Lara's hopeful suitor had a roommate that was there too, and Sam stopped thinking altogether.

* * *

><p>They went home with the two strangers, Lara with one, Sam with the other. The four of them crammed into a cab and Lara suggested their place, unwilling to take them to Sam's apartment, or to the Manor.<p>

Sam was hungover the next morning. Lara was not. Sam staggered out of the bedroom, ready to throw up. Lara had already dressed, fetched coffee, directed her to the bathroom, held Sam's hair back, and called them both a cab. They didn't even leave a note.

They didn't say anything on the way back to the Manor. Lara didn't comment on the sounds of desperate, drunken 'still-alive' sex that came from Sam's side of the bedroom wall. Sam didn't mention that she'd heard Lara hiss out Alex's name loud enough to be heard by everyone in the apartment. Sam didn't mention that she saw Lara peeking in to check on her after the guys had both passed out. Lara didn't mention that she'd spent the night sitting outside Alex's door, not even trying to sleep. Sam didn't mention the nightmares being worse with an unfamiliar bed and an unfamiliar body pressed against her bare back. Lara didn't mention that both Sam and her bed-mate had been too wasted to wake up when she came in to try and release her friend from the bad dream.

Sam started to cry softly, not making a sound as the tears rolled down her face. Lara softened, squeezing her fingers.

* * *

><p>They spoke of it the next night, just for a moment.<p>

"It's just..." Sam whispered out of nowhere. "I'm scared to sleep alone. And you sit next to the bed, and you stay on guard. If I sleep, you don't. So, I thought... If having a wild night and a few shots and some company in bed would make the bad stuff easier to deal with, then maybe you wouldn't have to worry. I thought, maybe we could both have a night off."

"It was a mistake." Lara said softly. "One we needed to make."

"We?" Sam snorted softly. "Lara, I know it was my idea to go out, but let's not do it again, huh? Not until we're... better?"

Lara nodded exactly once; and they never spoke of it beyond that.

* * *

><p>Lara needed to move. When she was still, she was hunting; and she didn't dare go hunting.<p>

The nightclub had been all about restraint. The guy had run a hand over her flanks. It was harmless flirtation, and she'd done nothing to discourage it. In fact, she was hoping he'd go further. But by chance, his fingers had taken the same route as someone else's, and it had taken all her willpower not to break his jaw. The last time someone ran his hands over her flanks, she'd killed him.

She knew things were different here. She clung to that idea. _Different here. Different here. Different here._

The Raider was chafing. The Raider wanted to run, wanted to hunt, wanted to...

_...to what? That's the problem! _She raged at herself. _There's no place for a Raider here._

The Raider told her to cut Sam loose. She'd done her job and brought her friend home safe. Sam didn't need her any more, because things were different here.

Lara clung to Sam. Sam put the Raider to rest. Sam was Lara's friend. The Raider didn't have friends. Sam was the point of compromise. As long as Lara wanted Sam to be okay, The Raider still had a function. Yamatai's shadow could still be fought here.

But as days passed into weeks and Sam finally started to recover, The Raider was running out of time.

* * *

><p>Sam was sleeping through the night again. The simple relief of a good night's sleep was immeasurable. Sam seemed lighter and freer every day. Her classwork improved, her grade point average returned to normal, her therapy sessions were scaled back, and she even moved out of the Manor, though she made sure to speak to Lara every day.<p>

At first, Lara was her safety net. But slowly, it was starting to turn out the other way. Lara wasn't recovering so well.

_Different here. Different here. Different here._

Sam wasn't sure how to handle it. Compared to Yamatai, home was pure heaven. Lara's legendary mental stamina had carried her through hell. Why couldn't she stand to live in heaven? Endless suffering and brutality had made Lara thrive. Why was convenience and comfort bringing her undone?

The Raider never gave an inch on anything. Not even on Lara.

Sam shivered. She had never told anyone, not even Lara, but she remembered every second of Mathias' rituals. The Sun Queen had invaded her, tried to force Sam out of her own body and soul. Sam had spent the length of the final fight waging a war of her own, a tiny voice against something inhuman. She wondered if The Raider was having the same effect on Lara, refusing to let her host be who she really was.

* * *

><p>The Raider was strongest at night. Night was when Civilization hid inside and the predators did their work, even in London. The Raider wanted out.<p>

Lara ran through the grounds. The Manor had some places where the groundskeepers had left it to grow. Old trees, dried leaves, fallen branches, plenty of rocks, plenty of wildlife, no paths. The closest to wilds that her world still had.

Lara ran the grounds at night, leaping over debris, scrambling over rocks, darting in and out of branches and pitfalls, in trees so dark she could barely see them...

And then she reached the walls, and didn't even slow down, scaling them fast and landing hard on the other side. The fence was easier to climb than a wrecked plane or an ice cliff.

* * *

><p>A few days on the Internet had shown her that she wasn't entirely alone. Parkour artists and free-runners were all over the place, scaling buildings and hurling themselves in and out of the forgotten places of civilization.<p>

Lara joined the thrill-seekers after dark. They ran through the rooftops, danced on wires... Through places that weren't theirs to explore. Lara split off from the rest of them when they pulled out their phones and cameras. She didn't want to wind up on Youtube. Sam wouldn't approve.

* * *

><p>"Freeze!" A voice roared when she landed back at ground level.<p>

Lara looked up at the cop that had cornered her... And just for a split second, she knew how to disarm him. There were three different ways to make sure he wouldn't take her prisoner. One of them was lethal.

She clamped down on it instantly, but just for a split second, she was getting ready to fight, escape, vanish...

But London wasn't Yamatai, and she put her hands up obediently. _Different here. Different here. Different here._

The Raider howled when the handcuffs clicked on her wrists. But London was not The Raider's world, and Lara clamped down hard on the Warrior Within.

* * *

><p>There were four of them in the holding cell. Lara stared them all down. Her leg was bouncing compulsively with nervous energy. Her hands were opening and closing. She could feel her fingernails cutting into her palms.<p>

Sam arrived a few hours later and bailed her out. Lara said nothing on the way home. Sam drove, and bit her tongue all the way back to the Manor. Once Lara had dropped out of school, it didn't make sense that she keep her apartment close to campus.

The staff was all asleep, not knowing if she was staying at the Manor that night. She was hard to predict.

Sam said nothing as Lara produced a key. She had hidden it in her sock. Nobody was trying to steal her resources here, but she hid them anyway. Sam followed her into the Manor. It was understood that she would spend the night again. In a lot of ways, Sam was rapidly becoming her only point of human contact.

When they reached her bedroom, Sam entered the room first. Lara had rearranged the furniture a bit, to make herself less visible from outside, and so that she could sleep with her back to the wall.

Sam pulled the blankets back and dared Lara to object. Lara sat on the edge of the bed, and Sam put a hand up. Lara sighed and surrendered, taking her boots off. Only soldiers slept with their boots on. Soldiers and The Raider.

Sam took her hands and turned them over. Her nails had been chewed down to nothing, and were covered in grime and scrapes from her 'runs'.

"Why?" Sam asked softly at last. "Is it just the adrenaline? Is it the danger? If you wanted pain, you would just cut yourself, so what is it? What are you after?"

"I don't know." Lara admitted. "I'm... I'm not finished yet."

Sam looked sick. "You want to go back."

Lara shook her head. Not afraid, just certain. "No. Yamatai is done. I'm not finished, but the Island is."

Sam didn't answer that, but the relief was clear on her face. "Then... what?"

"I don't know." Lara admitted, exhaustion creeping in. "Yamatai woke something up. I'm halfway to understanding what it is, but I don't know how to come the rest of the way."

"Have you spoken to your Doctor about this?"

Lara looked at her hard. "Have you?"

Sam looked at her evenly, and shook her head. "I haven't told him anything. If I told him the truth he'd put me away for life." Sam sighed hard. "Why is it so hard to talk to them about Yamatai, just because they weren't there?"

"About Yamatai? Sam, I can't talk to them about _anything _any more."

Sam gestured, and Lara lay back obediently. Sam went through Lara's medicine cabinet and collected the prescriptions the doctors gave her. Lara tossed back the pills that Sam put in her hand. The first few nights, she only pretended to take them, but Sam had caught onto that and made Lara open her mouth to double-check.

Sam stared at her for a while, feeling helpless, before she tucked The Raider in and switched off the light. "Don't sneak out again."

"I won't." Lara promised as Sam left the room.

Lara needed Sam to keep The Raider in her place. The Raider needed Sam to stay relevant in Lara's life. Sam needed both of them, but less and less every day. Lara didn't know what The Raider would do without Sam. The Raider didn't know what Lara would do without the Warrior.

It scared her.

She was Torn.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN<strong>: Read and Review!_


	12. Healing

When Sam came back to the Manor, she never knew what she would find. Some days she found empty bullet casings in the driveway. She never knew what Lara was using for target practice.

Other days, the Manor's sitting rooms were rearranged, furniture moved to the walls, away from the windows. Lara was locked in her library most of the day. Delivery men came every morning. New books, new tools, a few weapons. Debt collectors came, demanding money. Lawyers came the next day with paperwork for Lara to sign.

Sam suddenly realized what had happened. Lara had cashed in her trust funds. Whatever she was doing with her life now, she was never going back to school.

The thought made Sam numb. If she was going to keep going on with her own life, she could only 'mother' Lara Croft for so long. But part of her was still terrified of trying to live in the city without Lara there to protect her from things that only they believed in. But if she left, what would The Raider do next? Their shared experience had left Sam and Lara with a strange dependency on each other.

Once, Sam came into a drawing room and nearly gagged. The room was thick with the smell of burning spices, incense... Symbols had been drawn into the hardwood floors around various talismans that she couldn't guess at.

Some of the symbols were drawn in blood.

* * *

><p><em>She was running again. She was knee deep in snow, so her stride was odd, but it was all the same action, legs pumping like pistons and arms swinging to keep the rhythm.<em>

_She was being hunted. Another feeling she knew well. Something behind her was huge and malevolent and full of pure power. She didn't know what it was, but it was large enough to rip her limb from limb._

_Her legs burned inside, her face burned as the branches reached out to slap and tear at her face. The rest of her was burning from the cold._

_She kept running over uneven ground, until the ground suddenly ran out. She didn't even slow her stride, leaping out into the nothing..._

_The wind and fog and snow whipped around until she couldn't see more than six feet in front of her._

_She could cover seven feet in a leap._

_Her arms spread wide as if she had wings, and she felt herself drop..._

* * *

><p>Lara woke up. She shook off the dream. She wasn't sure if it was a nightmare. Her nightmares were far more obvious now. She blinked sleep out of her eyes. She'd given in to sleep in the library.<p>

She had a window beside her chair, giving her a clear view of the driveway.

A delivery van was coming toward the Manor.

* * *

><p>Sam came into the kitchen and was surprised to see it empty. Lara's staff had been scarce the night before, though she thought they were just being discreet. She had expected the smell of coffee or breakfast...<p>

She heard the sound of heavy scraping in the hall, moving away from the kitchen. She went to investigate. "Hello?"

"In here." An unfamiliar voice called.

Sam had to go through three corridors to find them; but eventually, she followed the dirt tracks on the floor. Something large had been dragged through. Whatever was being delivered that day, it was bigger than anything Lara had ordered so far.

She eventually found the deliveryman in the main hallway, off the library. Sam had tried to enter the library the night before, only to find the doors locked shut from the inside. Lara hadn't even come out to let them in. "Hello."

"Ah. Lady Lara Croft?" The deliveryman let the box drop from the hand cart, and held out a clipboard.

Sam took it and signed automatically. "No, I'm her... well, her caregiver; at this point."

"I heard that!" Lara called from the library. "Be there in a minute!"

The man didn't care. He took his clipboard back, wished Sam a nice day, and left her to it. Sam looked up at the crate. It was bigger than she was by a few feet on every side.

Curious, Sam reached up and pulled away the cargo straps, and released the pulleys. The crate fell open just as Sam heard the library door unlock behind her.

The crate fell open, and Sam was suddenly nose to nose with a seven foot samurai warrior, with a blood red death mask over it's face and a lethal katana made of stone and black metal slung across its hip. The huge thing was nearly identical to Himiko's Guardians.

Sam let out a shriek so loud that Himiko probably heard it in the underworld, and before Sam was aware of anything else she had already fallen flat on her ass, scrabbling her nails on the tile floor to get away from it.

Lara was there instantly, trying to hold her still. "Sam! Sam! It's okay! It's not real! It's a dummy! A Mannequin! It's alright! I ordered it from a museum! It's okay!"

Sam felt arms around her body pinning her down, and went berserk, kicking and thrashing and biting. Lara didn't shout in pain, she just held on tighter until the panic attack faded, and Sam nearly passed out from the hyperventilation and adrenaline.

But eventually, they both settled, lying flat on the floor before a still, unseeing suit of empty armor.

"It's okay! It's okay!" Lara said, over and over in her ear like a mantra. "It's okay! It's okay!"

Long silence. Sam still hadn't taken her eyes off the thing, as thought it would come alive and attack if she so much as blinked.

"I'm sorry, I should have told you!" Lara whispered. "I'm so sorry, Sam. I was just trying to figure out-"

"Why is it here?" Sam demanded, barely recognizing her own sulfuric voice.

"I'm trying to figure out the parallels between Himiko's guards in her temple, and other cultures with-"

"Get. Off. Me." Sam commanded violently.

Lara did so, and Sam was up and marching. Lara scrambled to her feet and gave chase. "Sam, listen; I know I did this all wrong, but I swear, its has nothing to do with Yamatai, not the way you think, I just-"

Sam spun around and put Lara into a wall. Just for an instant, she could see The Raider flash across Lara's face, ready to push back, but Sam never let herself blink. "Listen to me right now." She snarled, nose to nose with her dearest friend. "My nightmares have stopped. I can buy food without crying, and see meat in the butcher's without flashing on cannibal gangs. I'm off my meds. I'm back at school, I'm being offered jobs, I can go out and see people without needing to get drunk and if I went back to that nightclub, I'm pretty sure I can get laid without having panic attacks. The only thing that's set me off for the last month, IS **YOU**!"

The Raider vanished in an instant, and Lara looked stunned, even horrified. "I... I..."

"I'm going out." Sam said tightly, and headed out the front door.

The Raider didn't follow. Lara felt like she was going to cry for the first time since the night the Endurance sank.

* * *

><p><em>The Bear was huge, bigger than any normal bear should be. On two legs it walked ten feet high, with bloodstained jaws, and claws polished black with dried gore.<em>

_It roared and dropped for a charge, standing squarely as Guardian between her and the entrance to..._

_...the entrance to..._

* * *

><p>Lara woke up hard, and found Sam standing in the doorway. Lara had fallen asleep in the chair next to the bed in Sam's guest room. For a long while, they just stared at each other.<p>

"I needed you." Sam said finally. "And you saved me from so many things..."

"But it's different now." Her protector agreed.

"Lara, I would cut both my arms off this second if I thought it would make it better." Sam promised.

"I know you would." Lara sighed. "And I think that's the problem. I think I'm not so much protecting you now as... as I'm using you as an excuse."

"An excuse to do what?"

Lara sighed. "Back on Yamatai, I kept running out of ammo. The guns weighed me down, but I held onto them. Couldn't let them go when there was a chance I would need them again, so I gambled that I would find what I needed and held on. I think... I think that as long as you're here, I'll never put my guns down."

"If I leave... What happens to you then?" Sam asked. "What happens to my best friend, Lara Croft?"

Lara's eyes flashed, and just for a second, Sam could see The Raider staring back at her, like the answer was obvious. And it was. Without Sam, Lara would never have a chance against The Raider.

_I owe The Raider my life._ Sam thought. _But Lara's my best friend._

"You pulled me out of darkness like a life preserver." Sam said quietly. "But if I leave, I think you'll be the one to drown. When you're not here, I never know if you're rolling around in a poison bush, or running over rooftops, or playing chicken with gangbangers... Or surrounding yourself with Samurai warriors."

"There's a reason for that." Lara promised quietly.

"I know." Sam nodded. "I don't know what it is, and I don't want to. But I've left Yamatai, and I don't think you have."

Silence.

"What now?" Lara whispered.

* * *

><p>Jonah Maiava was unchanged from his time on Yamatai. If he was having any re-entry trouble, Sam could see no sign of it when she opened the door for him. It made Sam feel better, having the rock solid Maori back. He was calm as a mountain lake, even as Sam jumped up on her toes to give him a hug. His eyes flicked to the clay pigeon in her hand, but he didn't remark on it.<p>

"It's good to see you, Sam." He hummed warmly. "I understand I'm needed?"

"I don't know who else to call." Sam admitted. "She can't be honest with any of her counselors, any more than I can. She sent the staff away last week on a paid vacation until she calls them back."

"So you moved in?"

Sam looked down. In truth, part of her still clung to Lara like she was a safety blanket, but it felt more and more like she was trying to hold Lara's sanity together. "It's... what I can do." She said aloud lamely.

Jonah took it calmly and looked around the foyer of Croft manor. If he was intimidated by the obvious wealth, it didn't show. "Is she in?"

"PULL!" Lara's voice called from somewhere outside.

Sam sighed and threw the clay pigeon like a Frisbee over his shoulder. Above their heads, Lara leaped from a second floor window, out into open space. She had a gun in her hand, and she fired it as she fell toward the tile floor. As the gun barked, Lara whipped out a hand and a thin rope flicked out from her wrist, attached to the window she had just jumped from.

The rope didn't hold, and Lara landed hard, twisting her feet under her. Her balance didn't fit right, and she went down on her face. That was when she noticed their guest. "Jonah."

"Morning, Little Bird." He chuckled, still unflappable. He held out a hand to help her up. She ignored it, standing up painfully on her own; as she glared at Sam.

"Well, I'm going to go get us some lunch. Chinese okay with you guys?" Sam said brightly, even as she left the two of them alone as fast as she possibly could.

* * *

><p>Lara led the way through the east wing of the Manor. "Paintball gun, honest. I'm not certain of my aim while swinging yet, and I don't want to blow holes in my house."<p>

"I didn't say anything." Jonah said lightly.

"And the windowsill needed to be replaced anyway."

"I didn't say anything." He said again.

"The rope was my own design. Doesn't work yet. You have no idea how many times I wished I had a grappling hook on Yamatai; but the four sided hooks? They're so damn awkward to carry. Took three different pieces of gear to make a zipline hold in those cliffs."

"I didn't say anything." He repeated.

"And those symbols on the floor aren't drawn in blood. Red dye and... I was recreating a few of the glyphs I saw on Yamatai, and comparing them to other lost civilizations in my books. I was tracing the languages of the place. There weren't any natives on that Island. Even Himiko had to come from somewhere else, and I was..."

"I didn't say anything." He insisted.

"You never do, Jonah; but I know you're here because Sam thinks I've gone completely mad." Lara sighed. "You probably will too."

"Try me."

Lara opened the door to the library. Every table was covered with open books. One wall was dedicated to a large world map, which was covered in pins, post-it notes and strings drawing lines back and forth.

Jonah took it all in, and decided what he was looking at. "You are searching for something."

Lara nodded. "I've... Yamatai changed my thinking."

"For all of us, little bird."

"I've been so blind... so naive. For years I resented my father, doubted him like the rest. But he was right about so much. I just wish I could tell him that now. There are so many mysteries that I once dismissed as mere stories. But the line between our myths and truth is fragile and blurry. I need to find answers... I must understand."

Jonah nodded, taking it in. "Why these civilizations? The earth is full of lost worlds, why them?"

Lara tapped the leather-bound journal. "My father. I'm... tracing his journey. It took me a while to figure out what he was looking for. The search took him through a dozen places. Stories of Reincarnating Buddhas, Fountains of Youth, even the Garden of Eden. Himiko was just another name on his list."

"What was he searching for?"

"Eternal life."

* * *

><p>Sam had never told Lara, but one of the interns from Whitman's show had contacted her after they got back. They were so eager to get the whole story. Having the star of the show killed on the expedition was good for commercial hype, but terrible for ratings in the long term.<p>

They tried to be nice about it, giving Sam plenty of time to recover after they got back, but as the school term ended, the show producers started sniffing around, wanting to get their expedition money back. None of the players that survived was willing to write a book, do a tell-all interview, agree to the movie rights...

* * *

><p>"Why the Samurai?" Jonah asked, looking over the armor that had shocked Sam so deeply.<p>

"Every one of these places has a similar story. A great prize, something belonging to the gods, with powerful guardians over the resting place of that power; staying on guard for eternity, defending the prize from unworthy intruders. On Yamatai, the guardian force was the storms. But almost every one of them has natural guardians too. Animal gods, usually."

Jonah nodded. "Every culture worships one animal or another as Gods. Or at the very least, spirit guides."

"On Yamatai, it was the wolf." Lara nodded. "Mathias' people had a bunch of them as guards, but they had the run of the Island."

Jonah looked back at the Samurai armor. "Why are you researching the Guardians?"

For a split second, Lara wanted to tell him about her dream. But she clamped down on that. Her hand had clasped her necklace.

Jonah noticed the movement. "That necklace is Jade."

Lara nodded. "My father gave it to me."

"It's a Yin-Yang symbol."

"I know, and the metaphors are all too apparent. Light and dark, split down the middle."

"Yeah, but... the point of that symbol isn't that one side is good and the other is bad, it's that they are opposites." Jonah explained. "And the thing everyone misses, is that the white side has a spot of black in it, and the black side has a spot of white. Even opposites have something in common."

Lara took the necklace off and looked at it. The jade was a single color, so it wasn't immediately obvious, but once Jonah had said it, it was impossible to miss. "Huh."

"So. What's your common ground?" Jonah asked her.

* * *

><p>There were suggestions that Lara and Sam might take over Whitman's show. Two best friends, famous for survival, exploring the world, discovering lost civilizations...<p>

Sam heard the offer and wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh, or fall on the floor, curl into a ball and sob.

But she was halfway back to the Manor when it struck her suddenly. Maybe it was what Lara needed. Maybe it was what The Raider needed.

And Sam had no idea whether or not to tell her.

* * *

><p>Jonah stayed another two days. He cooked for them, stayed in a guest room. When Sam left for the day, he and Lara spoke, exercised... Lara told him about the problem of her Duality. She told him about The Raider. The only person she had told, apart from Sam.<p>

"You told Sam that you are halfway to understanding something, but you don't know how to come the rest of the way." Jonah said quietly.

Lara nodded.

"I don't think you can do it here." He gestured at the huge map, at her father's journal. "If it could be found here, your father would have found it."

Lara nodded.

Jonah came over and gave rested a hand on her shoulder. "Since we got home, Sam has been the point of compromise between her friend: Lara Croft, and her Protector, The Tomb Raider. Sam is afraid of what will happen to you if she doesn't come along. But what you need, is a way to finish what you started."

Lara looked up, curious. "Explain that."

"You keep looking at it like a war between The Raider and The Girl. What you need, is not to win the war, but to make Peace. You must bring those two together. Because The Raider wouldn't have gone back for Sam. But Lara wouldn't have been able to save her. The Raider, without Lara; is a machine; worse than Mathias. Lara, without The Raider, is timid, wanting someone to rescue her, and playing it far too safe." He gestured at the world map. "But this life you have chosen is not for the timid."

"I think that's why Sam called you. I haven't chosen any life."

Jonah just looked at her. She looked away first. She had chosen, she just hadn't admitted it yet.

"So how do I make Lara and The Raider coexist?"

"They already do, Little Bird. Look in the mirror, it's your face. Both of them are you."

Lara didn't know what to say to that.

"Y'know, I don't know what Sam is talking about." Jonah said with a smile. "You're more like yourself than ever."

Lara felt her jaw drop. "What are you talking about?"

"Look at you!" He pointed at the library, at the charts, the maps, the books. "Back on Endurance, you talked our ears off, telling us stories of faraway lands and lost civilizations. That's why we were going to Yamatai. You were determined to discover it all, to show all the secrets of the ages. As far as I can see, Yamatai just made you stronger and more determined."

"Yeah, but..." Lara floundered. "...what else?"

"Well, for one thing, you believe." Jonah offered. "Remember, on the ship, we told each stories from old mythologies, and you were always the first to laugh."

"Teen rebellion, more than disrespect." Lara offered. "My father kept telling me these stories like they were fact, and... I was somewhat of a..."

Jonah chuckled. "Well you wouldn't know it to look at you now." He smiled. "Look at you. You've got new eyes, but the stories are all the same, even the ones you've heard since you were a little girl."

Lara looked back at her father's journal, at all the work she had done to learn more, unravel her life... "I never thought of it like that." She chuckled. "In fact, when I was a little kid, I believed all of my dad's stories. It was only when I grew up that..." She trailed off.

Jonah picked up her father's journal. "Tell me a story, Little Bird."

Lara took the journal and opened to one of the stories she had liked as a little girl. The Raider had no part of her life then. The Raider had nothing to do with her father's journal. She was reinventing herself, starting with her earliest memories as a foundation. Memories that The Raider had no part in, and no power to poison. But these were memories that The Raider needed, as she was almost certainly going to go hunting in places forgotten by all but the mythology. The Raider embraced the need for these stories, this research... But these things belonged entirely to the Lady Croft.

She was healing.

* * *

><p>AN: Read and Review!<p> 


	13. Croft

_**AN**: For now, this is the finale. I might add more, once I play the second game, but as I'm strictly PS4, that may be a while. (BTW, Playstation fans; does that tick you off as much as me? Wasn't the Tomb Raider PS1's Number One Girl? Why is the competition getting exclusivity, even if just for a little while?)__But I'm not bitter about it, really. Honest._

* * *

><p>Sam came back to the manor, and made her way to Lara's library. On the way, she paused at the sight of the Samurai armor. After a moment, she squared her shoulders and walked past it without blinking.<p>

Pleased with herself, she came into the library, and froze in the doorway.

In the middle of the library, Jonah had set up a dojo. He and Lara were standing barefoot on some exercise mats, running through hand to hand combat drills. Lara was doing them blindfolded, while Jonah corrected her posture and stance.

Sam stepped into the room, and slammed the door hard, marching up to them in fury. "So now there are two of you!" She raged at Jonah. "I don't believe this! I call you up here to try and get Lara back to normal, and what do you do? You start teaching her how to knife-fight with her eyes closed! God help me the next time I try to wake her up for breakfast!"

Lara pulled off her blindfold before Sam had finished speaking and came running over. "Sam!" She wrapped her arms around Sam tightly. "I'm so sorry about last week! You were right, I never should have asked you to stay this long."

Sam froze. Lara was reacting like... like Lara. Like the girl she knew back before the Endurance. "Lara? Is.. are you... okay?"

"I found the point!" Lara told her with a smile. "It's not about the War! It's the story! A story that lasts thousands of years, Act One, ancient civilizations, Act Two: my dad; Third Act: Me!"

"I... what?" Sam was lost. She looked around, as if trying to find something that would make this whole crazy scene make sense... she focused on the map. A map with names written on it. "Kitezh." Sam read off the map.

Lara noticed the reaction. "That name means something to you? Because it's one of the places my father never got to visit. He was planning to, but-"

"-But he never found it, did he?" Sam finished.

Lara and Jonah both looked at her.

Sam shrank under their gaze. "Act Four, Enter Samantha."

"Give the lady a chair, Little Bird, I think she's going to tell us a story."

* * *

><p>Sam took a breath. "So, here it is. Some of Whitman's producers came to see me a while ago. They're trying to figure out what to do with his show now that he's... Well, roasting in the third circle of hell with all the other kidnappers, traitors, and reality show hosts."<p>

"They're talking to you?"

"Jo shut them down at once, you and Jonah they couldn't get on the phone, and I got an internship thanks to some of my camera footage of the Yamatai expedition." Sam explained. "Even if I missed all the important parts. But here's the thing... They wonder if maybe we'd like to take the show over."

Stunned silence.

"Me as the camera, you as the bold explorer." Sam went on. "You have background in dangerous situations and ancient lands. You have some fame as a tough as nails survivor, you have name recognition because of your family connections... and frankly, Lara; you're a lot hotter than Whitman; and nobody ever went broke pointing a camera at a glamor model instead of a history professor."

"They wouldn't send you into combat zones." Jonah put in. "It wouldn't be like Yamatai."

"But they'd fund me." Lara put in. "A television network can cut through red tape, get permits, keep a record..."

Sam licked her lips. "Kitezh is one of the places they were talking about, I'm sure of it." She told them. "Something happened in Eastern Europe, and somebody... well, found it."

"Found it." Lara repeated. "Just... found it?"

Sam nodded. "In the Siberian wilderness. There was a thing in the news a few months ago, where a bunch of sinkholes opened up in the Siberian ice, and a few news choppers and some scientific teams out of Moscow went to get some footage, take some readings..."

"I heard. Some Climate Change thing, right?" Jonah put in.

"That's what they think, but some scientists were doing some surveys of the area with ground sonar, trying to get a read on how solid the ground was..."

"And they stumbled onto a lost city." Lara said, suddenly a million miles away. "Sam, who are you talking to at the network?"

"A guy you never met, named Peter Dorian."

"Call him back and tell him he's got a trial run. I'll go to Kitezh."

Sam pulled out her phone. "_We'll_ go to Kitezh."

* * *

><p>Two days later, it all came undone. Sam hadn't received any of the forms she'd been told to expect, and Peter Dorian was not at all enlightening.<p>

"Kitezh? Not any more." Peter told Sam. "Yeah, we're going in a different direction."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's sort of proven to be difficult to get the necessary papers, given the time-frame, the cost, the liability insurance-"

"You're talking very fast." Sam observed.

"Am I? I hadn't noticed. My wife says that I do that, but I think she just has slow ears."

Sam's head tilted. She'd picked up on enough twitchy clues from Lara's re-entry trouble. He was... manic. "Okay. What?" She asked him.

Peter looked around, nervous. "Not here."

* * *

><p>An hour later, she was back at the Manor, recounting the story to Lara and Jonah.<p>

"Apparently, the producers of the show were 'persuaded' to move production elsewhere." She explained. "The guy was still shaking they had him so rattled. I don't know exactly what they threatened him with, but it was clear it was going to be lethal to him, his family, his coworkers, and anyone who showed up in the Interior."

"Who are 'they'?" Lara asked.

"He didn't know for sure, but apparently they're organized, wealthy, and very determined to keep people away from Kitezh. The impression he got was that they'd been looking for it for a while, and they want first dibs on whatever's there."

"We don't _know_ what's there!" Jonah protested.

Lara's voice was pure Raider. "And what did Mathias know for sure he would find? When someone offers the Gifts of the Gods... You go looking for them on faith. And you go all the way; or stay home."

Lara had turned to stone. Her eyes were nearly glowing with restrained energy. For the first time, she had some idea of what Jonah had been trying to teach her. The Raider was suddenly cool and calm and patient. For the first time since Yamatai, Lara had no trouble holding her other half in check. The Raider was patient, knowing her purpose, and knowing exactly when her time would come. Lara could take the wheel as long as she needed. The Raider was ready for her moment.

"Jonah." Lara said crisply. "Call every supplier in the Siberian area, and tell them to prepare travel gear for me. Use my name. Use my credit cards. Then, arrange a charter flight. Use my name, use my accounts. Tell them I want transport to the area, and there's no need to wait until spring."

"Lara, if these heavies are for real, they'll have a presence in this lost city of yours." Sam nearly moaned. "They would have tracked the show through Dorain's charter flights. Using your name would just be begging them to come and get you next."

Dead silence. Lara smiled like a crocodile.

"I think that's the point." Jonah said quietly.

"I need a minute!" Sam put in, and promptly pulled Lara away from the maps, and out of the library, leaving Jonah behind.

* * *

><p>"Hello." Lara said politely once Sam had slammed the door behind them. "What's on your mind?"<p>

"You've been talking about ancient history. Let's talk modern history." Sam told her. "You know why the Nazi's lost WW2? Because their leader was crazy enough to invade Russia in the dead of winter. The cold took half their army before the shooting ever started. Unlike Trinity, who have people everywhere, and thus plenty of local resources... You haven't fought a war in the cold for longer than two hours. You think you know what a storm is like because of Yamatai? The Siberian interior is thousands of miles by thousands of miles. There are no roads, no phones... If you so much as slip in the snow, you'll be _buried_. One thing you've never survived is an _avalanche."_

"Nobody's saying it's going to be easy!" Lara argued. "But-"

"You won't have the studio to help!" Sam interrupted. "I know you can afford it, but they can smooth over incidents, organize search and rescue... Lara, if you get taken hostage, there won't be anyone who can get you out again. If you die in there..."

"Hey, nobody's talking about that yet." Lara promised her. "But your co-workers are being threatened, and we don't even know by who."

"Not good enough." Sam said immediately. "My co-workers are only too happy to bow out and leave it alone. You keep going, you're not doing it for _them_."

"I know."

"So before you drag me along; I need a reason." Sam said seriously.

Lara let out a breath slowly. "I'm working on it."

* * *

><p>Within a day, Lara had signed all the papers she needed to sign. She had booked her own expedition to Kitzeh. The equipment suppliers gave her the option of having things delivered to her at home, or at the airport.<p>

She chose the airport, and paid them extra to make the shipment arrive by the very next morning.

* * *

><p>"You know, we could have shipped this to your home address automatically." The kid behind the counter told her. "You didn't have to come and sign for it here." He scanned the barcode. Lara's presence at airport customs was suddenly in The System.<p>

Lara gave the kid her most winning smile. "I had my reasons."

The kid blushed bright pink, just from her attention, and fell over himself to get her equipment delivered to The Manor. She gave him a wink and calmly headed for the parking garage, back to her motorcycle.

_Now we see if anyone bites._

* * *

><p>Within thirty seconds of entering the parking garage, The Raider knew instantly that she was being followed. She walked past her motorbike completely and kept moving, until she reached the roof. Once there, she found a large panel van. She circled around to the driverside door, then swiftly dropped, rolling underneath.<p>

The man came around the van swiftly, and froze when he saw she had vanished.

An instant later, she had pitched him over the edge of the parking garage railing. He had one leg still over the hand-railing, pinning him upside down, using her body to hold his leg against the wall.

He was already dangling by the time he figured out who had the drop on him.

"Who ordered it?" Lara demanded. "Whoever it was, they've threatened more than me. Who's at Kitzeh?"

"Pull me up!" The man yelled.

"Give me a name!" The Raider roared.

"Konstantin!" The man yelled.

Lara was about to ask for details, when she glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye. The Raider knew to move before stopping to check, and her prisoner screamed as he dropped. Lara was already in a tight roll between two cars before the first silenced gunshot.

_Whoever they are, they work in pairs._ The Raider noted. _Or more._

By the time the gunner had lined up his next shot, Lara was gone. The killer was trained, and made a smart guess about where his target had gone. He came around to the next row of cars and the silenced gun spat bullets immediately... His bullets struck two cars, making windows explode and car alarms scream.

Over the sound of the alarm, he never heard the footsteps behind him, and the gunman howled as a throwing knife speared his hand, then another into his shoulder.

The gun dropped, and Lara charged forward in a flying kick that put him down hard, driving the blades deeper.

Lara did a quick scan for more enemies, but she knew she wouldn't find one. She would have been shot already if there were more. The gunner was alive, but he wouldn't be speaking soon. Lara kept her face hidden from the security cameras in the lot, and made a quick search of him. No ID... but there was a phone. She pocketed it and got moving before someone came to arrest her.

* * *

><p>Sam met her in a cafe. Lara had chosen a table away from the windows, close to the nearest exit.<p>

Same looked over the phone. "They could track it."

"They were. There are ways around that." Lara told her, eyes roving constantly. "See the icon on the back?"

Sam nodded. "Don't recognize it."

"Custom made. I need you to do a search for that icon. I've seen it somewhere, but I can't place it."

Sam pocketed the phone. "What about you and Jonah. They've got your name."

"Working on that. But do me a favor, and run your search from someplace with a lot of people."

"I will." Sam promised. "They lived, by the way."

"Who?"

Sam tried not to snarl. "The two guys you put in the hospital."

"You mean the two guys who tried to kill me?" Lara reminded her.

"Tell me again, who's idea what it to use you as bait for exactly that reason?" Sam shot back. "Oh right, it was yours."

Silence.

"It's not like it was on Yamatai." Lara admitted. "Back there, it was so easy to just... But back here, I do the exact same thing and I feel like I'm going to get in trouble."

"For putting two knives into one guy, and throwing another off a building? Imagine." Sam deadpanned. "I can't imagine why I might have a problem with you doing this."

Lara didn't respond for a while. "In London, there are laws, and law enforcement and punishments. Out there, the only judge was whoever shot last. The rules are different here, Sam. But blood is still blood. Yamatai was in international waters. No laws out there. I didn't break any laws until today. But in London or on Yamatai, I'm still a killer. Not just because I took lives. It's more than that. I'm really _good_ at it."

"I'm only alive because you are." Sam said neutrally. "But I'm still waiting for a reason."

* * *

><p>"So that's where we stand." Lara summed up. "Sam will be back soon with the results of her search."<p>

"What about the Manor? Is this place safe?" Jonah asked carefully. "I mean, if they have your name, they have your address."

"I booked seven hotel rooms under my own name, and three under a fake ID." Lara told him. "They'll be looking for me, but we'll only be here another half hour. I had Sam run her search from a public computer at the library, so if they've got any kind of electronic surveillance on us, they won't hear anything." She shrugged. "Something I've gotten really good at since Yamatai is securing my places." Her head tilted. "She's here."

The library door opened a few moments later. "That icon was for a corpartion called 'Trinity'. We were right, it's not a commercially available phone, which means the guy you took it from was highly placed enough to get some proprietary toys. Trinity a multinational. One of those companies that has a finger in every pie. Private security, research, transport, electronics; and development. Which is code for: Whatever the hell they want, they can do, and declare it tax deductible." Sam reported as she came in, waving the printouts. "In fact, it turns out they were one of the companies making a play for Yamatai. Whitman's show beat them to the charter for the boat."

"Roth!" Lara exhaled his name like a prayer. "Roth was tight with my father, he wouldn't accept the other bid... because of my involvement."

"And now they're after Kitezh? Why?" Jonah asked.

"That's my cue." Lara picked up her father's journey. "In the 13th century, a Russian prince founded the city of Kitezh. It was actually two cities off the banks of Lake Svetloyar. One of the cities was taken by one of the Mongolian Khans, and the Prince withdrew his army to the other."

"What happened to the Prince? Do we know which one?"

"Hard to tell. The story is part history, part legend."

"Like Yamatai." Sam said numbly.

Lara flicked through her father's journal. "The Khan marched on the second city, when something happened. All the people, all the army, instead of fighting back, they started to pray."

"To who?"

"God, I assume. One or more." Lara waved that off. "But according to the legend... The whole city suddenly sank into the lake. The Gods sank it, to protect its wondrous treasures." She tossed the journal back to the table. "Mythology says that only the pure of heart can find the place and unlock its secrets."

"Just like Yamatai." Same said numbly again.

"A Russian version of Atlantis." Jonah nodded.

"And now it's been found." Lara smirked. "So it's a race, between me and Trinity." She went back to her maps. "That place is all former Soviet Union. There's probably some locals there too... If not in Kitzeh, then at least in the general area. God help them if Konstantin, whoever he is, decides they're useful to him..." She looked to Jonah. "We'd better move up our charter flight."

"I packed everything as soon as you left this morning." Jonah nodded. "We can go right now if you want. But what if he's already there?"

"Then we'll have to land somewhere far enough out that we won't be picked up." Lara pointed to the map. "Trek into range on foot. They won't be expecting outsiders."

"I need a minute." Sam put in. She erupted from her chair and promptly pulled Lara into another room.

* * *

><p>"Hello." Lara said, unsurprised that she was forcing the issue.<p>

"What the hell?" Sam demanded. "The only place on your father's list that's certain to be crawling with guns and wild animals and punishing storms and bad people who are clearly willing to kill you... That's where we're going?"

"I am. You're not."

"Now, wait just a damn minute-"

"I said, you're not going." Lara said firmly. "Sam, you were right. I'm only hurting you now. I thought that I needed to go back to plain old Lara Croft, but that's not it. I started that expedition because I was looking for something! I found it! I need this, Sam. I _need_ this."

"You don't give a bottle of booze to an alcoholic." Sam argued. "I trekked the Canadian interior once, Lara. A springtime hike through that kind of terrain nearly killed me. In winter, it gets to be 40 _below Celsius_. Siberia is _worse_. It's where the Tsars sent all the people that they wanted to die. And that's not even counting the animals. And that's not even counting the damn army that Konstantin will surely be bringing with him. And if Jonah's right, and he's beaten you there? He'll be sipping hot coffee in an air-conditioned helicopter, while you're spending _weeks_ climbing ice walls, slogging through tundras."

"I know." Lara nodded. "But there's nothing I can do about any of that."

"Yes there is! You can NOT go!" Sam snapped. "If this is just to make The Raider feel useful again-"

"No, that's not it. I thought it was, but... The Raider knows that the fastest way to survive a fight is to not have one. But this is my father's legacy, and that makes it mine. My father started it, and I want to finish it."

"WHY?!" Sam almost screamed. "I need a reason! I need a _real_ reason! This can't be about your father! Not if it's going to get _you_ killed! If your dad had any sense, he'd say the same thing. No parent wants their kid to get killed."

"Yamatai proved that there was so much more to the world." Lara said intensely. "So much that's been forgotten. The part of me that's The Raider knows that I can handle anything my father's quest can throw at me. So if I'm a believer, _and_ a ready warrior... why wouldn't I _want_ to go?"

"Is this Lord Croft's daughter talking, or the Tomb Raider?" Sam challenged.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Sam! For the first time, I'm _both_!" Lara insisted. "I found my path! And right now, it leads to Kitzeh."

Silence.

"I can't." Sam said finally, caving in on herself. "I can't go with you. It was one thing for a TV show, but I've been clawing my way back from that kind of hell for _months_, and..."

There was a gentle knock on the door. Jonah put his head around it. "Can I come in? It doesn't really seem like girl talk."

"And _you_! I called you here to help me snap her out of it." Sam turned on Jonah, betrayed.

"No, you called me here to help Lara get better." Jonah told her. "Sam... that's exactly what I'm doing."

"Doesn't look like it from here." Sam snapped at him.

"You thought the way to help Lara was to banish the Raider. But there was a better way."

"Sam." Lara took her best friend's face between her hands and made Sam look her in the eyes. "He _is_ helping. It makes sense now. Even before all of this... My marksmanship is Olympic level good. I can climb a rope in six seconds flat. I've broken every speed trial, endurance record, and agility score that the university has on the books. I break in at night and time myself on all the obstacle courses. I have enough Trust money to buy my own submarine if I needed one, and my title makes me a welcome guest in every embassy around the world. I can name poisonous and edible plants on sight, and I know a dozen languages, five of which haven't been spoken in a thousand years. All that stuff? All of it came _before_ Yamatai."

Sam was crying. "I know."

"Then I came back and started training. I can field strip an M-16 blindfolded. I can put three throwing knives an inch deep in a tree, all within a handspan of each other, from a range of fifteen feet. I know enough first aid to set a compound fracture and patch a bullet-wound. I can sneak up on every feral cat in London's alleyways and I can make a bow and arrow from tree limbs I find on the Manor grounds. I can-"

"I get it. Stop giving me the list!" Sam snapped.

Jonah came over and rested a hand on Sam's shoulder. "The point she's making here is..."

"I know the point." Sam snapped. "The point is, we're all making a big deal about how much she changed on Yamatai... But she didn't."

"No. I didn't." Lara agreed. "For better or worse, something in me woke up on Yamatai; but it was always there. I never saw it, because those skills were never needed... But I've been in training for this kind of life since the cradle. I don't know if my father wanted this for me, or if it was just the way things were in his world." She spread her hands wide. "My whole life has been leading me to this, Sam."

Desperate silence.

"You're going to kill yourself!" Sam said in a low, dark voice. "And I'm not going to stand around and watch! The others are all in awe of the Tomb Raider, but I'm not! You're going to kill yourself, and you don't even care!" She pushed away from Lara. "Let me give you another list. Before Yamatai, you didn't have flashbacks when you ate. You didn't sleep with your back to the wall. You could take a shower without barricading the door, and without taking a knife in with you. You could sleep through the sound of a footstep, and you didn't hide guns in every room!"

"Sam-"

"NO!" Sam yelled. "I'M DONE! You think that because you saved my life a thousand different ways, it means I have to agree with everything you say and do. But I don't! You're going to kill yourself, and I won't wish you luck on it!"

Sam turned hard away from her and stormed for the door. Lara got there first and blocked her. "Sam... I don't want to leave with you hating me!" She insisted. "Just... look at me, Sam. Please just look at me right now."

Sam looked at her. Lara wasn't manic, or fierce. She wasn't restraining violence or threatening herself or others. She was so... ready. She was still, but ready to move instantly. She had the awareness and ready confidence of a jungle cat. Lara made Sam look at her eyes. The Raider was there. But so was Lara. It was the first time she had seen her friend so... whole.

"Hey." Lara's voice was so gentle and kind that Sam felt like she was back with her old friend again. "Back on Yamatai, I had to make a choice. The Raider would have left you behind. But I had to go back for you, Sam. If I had decided to leave you, then I would have become something else entirely. I would be worse than Mathias. I made a promise on the island, to get you out safe." She squeezed Sam's fingers tightly. "So I'm making you another promise now... I'll come back. Let me save you one last time. By leaving you here."

"You can't make that promise."

"I know. But I've done lots of impossible things." Lara held a hand out to her. "I know you can't come with me. But please... I'm leaving tonight. Let's not say goodbye like this."

Sam took a deep breath... And stormed out. "Go to hell."

* * *

><p>Lara was a million miles away while Jonah made the pre-flight checks. "Last chance to back out, Little Bird."<p>

Lara nodded. "I know." She sucked in a breath. "It's weird. I'm not scared of the Siberian tundra, not scared off by guns or savage animals... But I'm seriously considering just chucking the whole thing in because Sam doesn't want me to go."

Jonah smiled. "She feels bad about the way you left things."

"You spoke to her?"

"Not since she left the Manor." Jonah shook his head. "But if she didn't want to settle things before you left, why would she be here?"

He said it so casually that she almost didn't register the words. But she followed his gaze and saw Sam hurrying across the airfield, waving a hand wildly back and forth, lugging a case along behind her.

"Oh, she's crazy." Lara said, but couldn't help the smile on her face. "Put us back in holding for a minute."

"Oh, the tower will love that." Jonah smirked.

scene break

Sam was breathing hard as the stairs came down and Lara left the plane. The Lady Croft ran across to meet her. If they were tasking off from a large airport, it would have caused chaos, but here at a private airfield, they had privacy.

"You were right." Sam said immediately. "You didn't change that much. You just... became more like yourself. You've become who you're meant to be." She clasped Lara's hands tightly. "But I don't want to say goodbye like this. In fact... I don't want to say goodbye at all. I wasn't angry. I mean, I was, but that's not why I bit your head off."

"I know." Lara nodded, tears forming at the corner of her eyes for the first time since the day after the shipwreck.

"I'm scared." Sam confessed. "You're right, I don't need your protection here in London, but you've been protecting me for what feels like forever, and I don't know how to handle it."

Lara almost laughed. "Funny. I was about to say the exact same thing." She looked down. "I couldn't do this if you hated me."

They hugged each other tightly.

"You know what's really scaring me?" Sam confessed in her ear. "You've found your place in the universe, and I'm not there. And I never will be." She sniffed. "I feel so... selfish, wanting you to stay anyway."

Lara shook her head. "It wasn't selfish, Sam. For a long time, you were the only thing keeping me sane. You're still trying to protect me. I know that. I believe that, because whatever I am now... I'm still your friend. I'm still Lara."

"Yes you are." Sam agreed.

The two of them gave each other a tight hug.

When they broke, Lara gestured at the case Sam was lugging along. "You coming along after all?"

"Oh, dear god in heaven, no; of course not." Sam snorted. "But if you're going to do this..." She balanced the case across her arm, and flipped the latches.

Lara smiled broadly. Sam had bought her a bow. It was an expensive, custom-made compound bow, with hunting sights and a leather quiver full of steel tipped arrows.

"I figure you probably have one already, but just in case, there's half a dozen bowstrings in there too, with loop weaves. If you have to, you can turn any curved stick into a longbow." Sam told her. "Or if not, they make good strangle-wire."

"You've been hanging around with a bad crowd." Lara chuckled. "I have to. You know that. Part of me wants to stay, but I _have_ to go."

"Of course you do." Sam said with a tight smile.

Neither of them said it out loud, but they both knew it. Lara would either come back, and immediately plan her next quest, or she'd die within the week. But Sam was not one for that kind of life, and that meant their futures lay in different directions. Even if they saw each other again, this was goodbye.

"I figured it out, by the way." Sam said as they parted. "That all important reason? I figured it out."

Lara smiled as she turned and went back to the plane. "So did I."

Sam watched after her, eyes shining. She didn't need to say the reason out loud. But she said it anyway. "Because... you're a Croft."

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN<strong>: That's the last chapter for the foreseeable future. Read and Review!_


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